


The Tiny Peeta Diaries: Bathtime

by aimmyarrowshigh



Series: The Tiny Peeta Diaries (Or, Five Times Peeta Made People Say 'Dammit') [4]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon Compliant, Espionage, Fluff, Gen, Pre-Series, Toddlers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2011-07-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 03:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8313052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: "There's a little door!" Peeta said, astonished. "Where does it go?"
"It's a secret tunnel," Madge whispered. "My mama showed it to me and showed to me how to hide in it. It goes anywhere. She said that if things get too scary, I should go to Mr. Abernathy's house in it."--Illustrated by everybodysbadintentions.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [District Twelve (The Girl with the Boy)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/812846) by [aimmyarrowshigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh). 



> Somehow I had never posted these over to AO3 back in 2013! So, enjoy. :)

* * *

**004\. Bathtime**  
"I want to – um," Peeta started before, stumbling over his shoelaces. He rubbed his nose and ran to catch up with his father's long stride. "Wait for me! I um – I want to carry this cake."

"Sorry, Peeta," said Farll, "Not this time. Next time, bub."

"Why?" Peeta asked, trotting along beside his father.

"This is an important cake," Farll explained patiently. "I know you're careful, but we can't drop this one."

"I only dropped – " Peeta quickly counted in his head. "Four. But I only wasfour, and now I'm five, and I can carry the important cakes now."

Farll cracked a smile. "I know, bub. I know you can."

"Well." Peeta held out his arms expectantly. "It's not that important a cake, it's just goin' to stinky Madge's house." He wrinkled his nose.

"You like Madge," Farll reminded Peeta gently.

"I know, but she's a girl," Peeta whined, galloping a few steps for the enjoyment of the loud sound of his boots scuffing pavement. "All her stuff's all boring and she smells all bad 'n' like soap and stuff."

"That reminds me," Farll said dryly. "It's Sunday."

"No!" Peeta cried, stopping in his tracks. "No!"

"Yes," Farll said firmly. "After the Victory Tour dinner, you are going home and taking a bath."

Peeta's face crumpled and he stomped his feet, one-two, one-two. "This is the worst day ever! Please let me carry the cake if you're gonna make me take a bath!"

"Oh, stop it, Peeta," Farll sighed. "We're almost there anyway. You need to be on your absolutely best behavior right now. The President is going to be at the party tonight and you mustbe good."

Peeta frowned. "I'm have to go play quietly with Madge upstairs, don't I."

"Yes," Farll agreed. "Very quietly."

Peeta looked down at his boots. "Why does the President hate kids so much?"

"Peeta," Farll hissed. "Don't say things like that."

"I didn't say nothing!" Peeta exclaimed shrilly. "I just asked a question!"

"Anything," corrected Farll, leveling the cakestand in his arms. "Peeta, he doesn't – we can't talk about that."

Peeta huffed spectacularly as he climbed the tall, steep steps of the mayoral house. "Will you tell me later?"

"Just go on upstairs and play nicely with Madge, okay?" Farll pleaded, sounding tired. "If I can, I'll save you a slice of cake."

Peeta stomped upstairs, passing a skeletal-thin man with white skin that hung like wax on his bones and huge, grotesque red lips.

"Worst day ever," Peeta grumbled. "I don't even like cimmanin cake that much."

When Peeta found Madge, she was sitting upside-down on her rocking chair, feet pointed to the ceiling and white-blonde hair falling towards the floor.

"What are you doing?" Peeta asked, plunking himself down on the rug to wrestle with his bootlaces.

"My mom said I have to try to see things from another perspective," Madge said primly, still upside-down. "'Cause I said I was mad at Daddy 'cause I'm sick of him bein' Mayor and the President all comin' here every year and making my mom sad."

"Oh," chirruped Peeta. "Does being upside-down help?"

"I don't know," Madge said thoughtfully. "But it makes my head feel funny. So maybe."

"I'm mad, too," Peeta said. "I wanted to carry the cake and my dad said I couldn't, and I don't think we're gonna get to eat any. But I can do important things now 'cause I'm five and he doesn't trust me to do good enough for the stupid President."

"He is stupid," grumbled Madge, tumbling feet-over-head onto the floor. "It's so boring when he comes here." She looked up at Peeta from where she stayed, sprawled on the floor. "What do you wanna play?"

Peeta shrugged. "Whatever. Not dolls again. Or house. Or Bakery. And my dad said I'm not allowed to play Careers And Tributes anymore."

"Good," Madge grumbled. "You hurted my arm last time."

"I know." Peeta looked abashed. "I'm sorry."

"Let's play Hide-and-Seek," Madge suggested. "Only… we'll both hide, and we're just be hiding at the party. And they can, um, not-seek us."

"Okay," Peeta agreed. "How do we hide down the stairs?"

Madge's blue eyes gleamed. "I know!" She jumped up and bounded over to the corner of her bedroom. "Help me move the dollhouse," she demanded.

Between Madge and Peeta, it took a good ten minutes to maneuver the large dollhouse down from the desktop without letting it crash to the floor and alerting the adults – and President Snow – to their presence. But when it had moved…

"There's a little door!" Peeta said, astonished. "Where does it go?"

"It's a secret tunnel," Madge whispered. "My mama showed it to me and showed it to me how to hide in it. It goes anywhere. She said that if things get too scary, I should go to Mr. Abernathy's house in it."

Peeta wrinkled his nose. "Mr. Abernathy? Why?"

Madge wrinkled her nose back. "That's what I said. He's mean and gross."

"Where does the passage go anywhere?" Peeta asked. Madge pushed open the door of the old dumbwaiter.

"Anywhere in the whole Panem," Madge said. "But it takes a long time to walk and I'm not supposed to. But sometimes," she whispered, pulling Peeta close to whisper in his ear, "Sometimes I hear voices in the wall."

"Is it scary?" Peeta asked. He only asked because he thought it was veryscary, and he wasn't sure he wanted to go play hide-and-seek with mysterious foreign voices that hid inside walls, roving in secret beneath Panem.

"Not usually," Madge said. She shrugged. "But we're not goin' far, we're just gonna go downstairs. Then we can listen from the basement door, and no one can see us!"

Peeta's mouth twisted.

"Okay…" he wavered.

Madge grinned at him with her gappy little-girl teeth, grabbed his hand, and climbed up into the dumbwaiter, pulling Peeta behind her. She left the door in the wall open, but pulled the metal screen shut, closing them inside.

"Okay," she reported. "Now we pull this, and it makes us go down or up."

"Okay," Peeta whispered, reaching for the pulley.

Peeta and Madge pulled…

The dumbwaiter creaked…

And down they fell, faster and faster!

"Too much pulling!" Madge squeaked, covering her eyes.

Peeta covered his, too, and thought numbly that when they landed, he would be squished into Peeta Jam –

"Ho, there," shushed a surprised voice, and the dumbwaiter halted with a shudder. There was a chuckle. "What do we have here?"

Peeta peeked out from between his fingers.

They were downstairs alright; they had bypassed the first floor and the basement and were somewhere down deep, like the mine field trips at school, below the ground. Haymitch Abernathy held the dumbwaiter in a bear hug. Peeta glanced up and saw the rope had frayed, and wondered for a second if maybe he had just wet his pants.

"Well, we're gonna have to tell Marjorae to replace that rope," Haymitch mumbled. "And now we've got two little prisoners down here."

Peeta gulped and grabbed Madge's hand. He realized that he wasn't the one who had wet the dumbwaiter floor.

"If you hurt her, you're gonna have to – to go through me first!" he threatened in a quavering little voice, setting his jaw and staring up at Haymitch's bleary face.

Haymitch laughed and set the dumbwaiter down. "I'm not gonna hurt anybody," he said. "I don't hurt kids."

He unlocked the dumbwaiter's screen door and the two shaken five-year-olds tumbled out gratefully into District Twelve's black dirt.

"Ugh," Haymitch grumbled, rubbing his face. "You're wet."

"Don' embarrass 'em, Haymitch," creaked another voice from the dark corner. A dark shape unfolded and approached. "We got dry clothes down here, let's clean 'em up."

"Witch," Madge whimpered, grabbing onto Peeta and burying her face in his shoulder.

"Don't you come near us!" Peeta warned, holding onto Madge. "I'll kick you!"

"Oh, for cripes' sake," Haymitch grumbled, turning to the witch. "I say we just leave them here."

"Haymitch," chided the witch. She knelt to face Peeta on his level. "Do you recognize me better now?"

Peeta pursed his lips. "You're that old lady from District Four," he said uncertainly. "You sent that girl the big knife and she killed Auger with it."

"That's right," Mags said softly, sadly. "I'm sorry."

"That's your job," Peeta said, matter-of-fact.

"Do you still think I'm a witch?"

"No," Peeta admitted. "I'm sorry. You're wearing black capes."

Mags smiled with the good side of her face. "So I am. Now. Can we clean you two up? Do you want some dry clothes?"

Peeta looked down at Madge, who still clung to him, but nodded.

Once Peeta and Madge were swimming instead in huge flannel shirts taken from a lopsided dresser along the tunnel's edge, next to a deep larder of preserved vegetables and tins of strange meat that Mags called "pickled fish" when she opened one for the hungry kids – Madge didn't like it, but Peeta did – Peeta sat quietly and contentedly at Mags' feet as she and Haymitch talked quietly about things Peeta didn't listen to, or understand, and Mags' gnarled hands brushed dirt from Peeta's blond curls. Once his hair was clean, she started on Madge's hair and braided it intricately into looping coils of golden rope all around her little head.

"Why are you down here?" Peeta asked curiously, twisting his neck to look up at the adults. "Why aren't at the party?"

"It's not a party," Haymitch grumbled.

"Yes, it is," Peeta argued. "There's a cake'n everything. I helped make it and my dad said that maybe if there's some left I can have some later."

"A cake doesn't make it a party," Haymitch said, and Mags put a restraining hand on his arm.

Peeta frowned in consternation. Of coursea cake made something a party. That was what bakers were for! Also bread for toasting, and rolls for eating, but cakes were always the most important.

"We just got tired of the party," Mags explained gently. "And I thought maybe I heard a little mouse scurrying in the walls!" She tickled Peeta- and Madge's ribs and they giggled. "Imagine my surprise when it was twolittle mice!"

"More like rats," Haymitch grunted, and Madge punched his knee.

"Don't you talk about me like that, Mister," she snapped. "I'll tell my mama on you."

Haymitch grumbled wordlessly.

"It sounds like the coast is clear," Mags said, tilting her head. "Let's get the little mice back upstairs to their parents."

She stood up slowly and Peeta trotted over to the table and picked up her walking stick. Its head was carved to be an intricately coiled conch shell.

"I like your wand," Peeta said appreciatively. "It's really pretty."

"Thank you, mijo," Mags said, taking the cane. "If you like it, then maybe I have a little presents for you two." She reached into the pocket of her flowing black tunic and pulled two small pieces of whittling.

"A boat for Peeta," she said, handing him the little wooden sailing ship, "And a mermaid for Madge."

"Thank you," said Madge, turning the doll over in her hands. She had strands of frayed, curling boat-rope for hair. "You forgot her legs, though."

Mags laughed, sounding surprisingly young. "Mermaids don't have legs, mija. They are magic creatures and live under the ocean, and they sing lovely songs."

"And kill people," snorted Haymitch.

Mags shot him a sharp look. "Or they lead boats to safety in the storms."

"What is a boat?" Peeta asked pensively, turning his over.

"It is freedom," Mags said dreamily. "A boat is what a person uses to travel on the ocean and see everything in the world and go on great adventures."

"Ooh," breathed Peeta, examining his little wooden boat. "And what's th'ocean?"

Mags laughed again. "Water," she said. "More water than you can imagine."

"Bigger than the well?" Madge asked.

"I once fell into the well," Peeta reported. "It was very big and they pulled me out with a bucket."

"Much bigger than the well," Mags agreed. "Bigger than the lake, bigger than District Twelve. Bigger than the whole of Panem all together."

"Wow," said Madge and Peeta, impressed.

Peeta was still thinking of the ocean, trying to imagine water that big – water full of mermaids and boats on adventures – when Haymitch delivered the filthy, dirt-covered and bruised little boy in hand-me-down flannels back to Farll after the Victory Tour train had pulled back out of the District Twelve station, Mags back aboard with her Victor.

"What in the criminy happened?" Farll asked, putting a protective hand over Peeta's damp hair.

"Seems your boy and the Undersee girl have a nose for trouble," Haymitch said simply. "And there was urine involved." He handed Farll the crumpled, damp packet of fabric that was Peeta's best little suit.

Farll sighed. "Thanks for watching him, I guess."

Haymitch grunted and turned towards the Victor's Village, shambling off towards home.

Farll looked down at his son. "Dammit, Peeta," he sighed, without any malice. "It's a good thing you're getting your bath tonight."

Peeta nodded. "Can I play with my boat in the bath?"

"I don't see why not," Farll said, shrugging. "What's a boat?"

"Freedom," Peeta answered, clacking his boots along beside his father on the dark sidewalk home.


End file.
